Black Youth Project is deeply embedded in the Chicago community. Each summer and throughout the academic year, we host extra-curricular programming with Black and Brown youth in the Chicagoland area to encourage student activism, self-sufficiency, and using data to solve problems facing communities of color.
Here is a brief description of our current programs:
Black Life Everywhere
Black Life Everywhere (BLE) works with creators to preserve and present nuanced representations that are expressive of Black life. We see music, film, animation, photography, poetry, interviews and writing as integral to how we communicate and tell stories. For us, these varying forms of expression are legitimate and necessary instruments to produce freedom dreaming that moves us towards Black liberation. BLE seeks to amplify Black creative voices that center the lives, histories, and well being of the Black communities we engage. Our goal is to show the nuance, beauty, challenges, and joy that constitute Black Life Everywhere, today.
The GenForward Survey
The GenForward Survey is the first of its kind—a nationally representative survey that pays special attention to how race and ethnicity shape how young adults, both Millennials and Gen Z-ers, experience and think about the world. Beyond voting, the most consistent method for monitoring the pulse of the public is the use of surveys and polling. The reporting of statistics on what percentage of Americans support or oppose policies works to insert the voice of the public into public policy discussions. Unfortunately, because of cost and interest, the voices of young Americans, especially young Americans of color, are routinely absent in public opinion polls. The GenForward Survey project is housed at the University of Chicago. Interviews for the survey are conducted with a representative sample from GenForward®, a nationally representative survey panel of adults ages 18-40.
Student Voice and Activism Fellowship
Each summer since 2013, we have partnered with Chicago Public Schools’ Student Voice and Activism Committees to bring 15 to 25 Black and Brown youth to the University of Chicago campus for a six-week intensive program. The summer includes social activism training on issues like racism, sexism, oppression, classism, and inequality. It also entails research methods training where students learn basic statistics and data collection including interviews, surveys, and content analysis. The final component of the summer is multimedia focused. Students learn how to used social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, and G+ to disseminate surveys, draw attention to the issues they are investigating, and publicize their findings.
BYP Fellows
During summer 2016, students from the University of Chicago Lab School and UChicago Charter School in Woodlawn met throughout the week for five weeks. There, they learned the basics writing for the web, journalism ethics, synthesizing data to tell stories, and investigating issues facing their communities. These students went on to work in a hands-on writing environment over the academic year in the BYP Saturday intensive writing room.
Student projects included investigating the connections between FBI crime statistics and police arrests in Chicago neighborhoods, understanding the role of race in standardized testing outcomes, and the narratives coming out of the Women’s March in January 2017.
